Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The Warlock vs. Melee Conundrum

Some of you may be wondering why I have a picture of a little Farm boy on my blog this morning, waiting by the fireside by the buff. Indeed a valid question, especially when considering my one-month hiatus from blogging. But whatever you pervs are thinking, stop. It is simply to illustrate a Warlock/WoW-related point, which we'll come back to it in just a second.

But first, one of the issues, if not THE issue PvP Warlocks are facing these days is the lack of balanced survivability against melee classes. Rogues and Warriors are currently the bane of our existence, with an array of tools and abilities that can keep them close in proximity and preventing us from doing anything substantial. I'm sure you've all had the pleasure of experiencing what seems like hours worth of spell push-back due to fast melee attacks, all while getting intercepted, gouged, cheap-shotted, and kidney-shotted all the way to death, and with no real means of escape.

Fear? Please. If it hadn't been nerfed to death with immunities, trinkets, and diminishing returns, maybe. But in it's current form, it is a VERY weak defensive spell, and sadly, it is our class-defining ability. What does that say about Warlocks as a whole?

Deathcoil, while a great stand-alone defensive spell, only delays the inevitable. Warriors can intercept right back to the Warlock and continue smashing their faces in, and Rogues can, well, do about 10 different things that will keep them in control of the encounter--thinking about all of them makes my head spin, actually.

NO class should have absolutely NO chance to win when engaged with another, but in the case of Warlocks and melee, we are pretty close to that point. Even Soul Link, with the lack of Pet Scaling and the 5% nerf it will be receiving soon, isn't enough to handle the obscene amounts of white damage melee can produce. Such unbalanced encounters can make for very frustrating, one-sided experiences akin to the "Warlocks are Mushrooms" days of early WoW PvP. Add to that the multi-crippling effect that Resilience has on our abilities and the availability of Ignore Armor stats to melee and you can understand the up-hill-balance-battle that we Warlocks are now facing.

Things have got to change, and as we approach the beta phase of WotLK production, our question becomes this: what changes would help create balanced survivability for Warlocks against heavy, fast-hitting melee?

We've all heard of the new self-teleporting Demonic Circle ability Warlocks will be receiving in Wrath of the Lich King, and indeed it's sole purpose is to help the Warlock escape from within melee range. But in thinking critically about the spell, you should also be asking yourself a multitude of questions about it. For example, in it's final form, what will it's range limit be? Will it be affected by line of sight? What will be it's cooldown? Will it be enough?

Since the ability, as with all new WotLK abilities, is still under development, it's tough to say. But the short answer is "no," and here's why:

Each combat stat is designed to have a single counter-stat in the World of Warcraft. Or, at least, this is the ideal blueprint that Blizzard used to apply. Spell Resistance was countered by Spell Penetration. Percent chance to Dodge was countered by Hit Rating, etc. It was simple, and for the most part, successful... until the Arena came along and the concept of Resilience was introduced.

Resilience, from the start, was a terrible idea--to minimize Critical strikes in the PvP equation completely gimped Mages, Destruction Warlocks, and a multitude of other classes and specs that are only successful when they are allowed to crit with no penalty. But, it was what it was, and at least it ONLY severly gimped one Warlock talent tree. That is, until Blizzard strayed from their original blueprints and allowed Resilience to counter a SECOND variable, Damage over Time spells, and therefore indirectly affecting Spell Damage at the same time.

At this point, two Warlock staples, Spell Damage via DoTS and Spell Crit Chance, are countered by a single PvP stat. And it didn't stop there.

Soon, Channeled spells were thrown into the mix, becoming the THIRD variable affected by Resilience. This was only done to minimize the effect of drain teams, but a change to the approach Warlock PvP should be played nonetheless.

Lets put everything together now to put this problem into perspective.

The Warlock class has had its defensive spells nullified by buffs to melee. What offense we did have left is nullified by the effects of Resilience on our spells and abilities. What on earth do we have left? An SL/SL build that requires us to ride the coattails of our Rogue or Priest or Druid or whatever other cookie-cutter combo we can team up with?

Things have got to change, and it is up to the Warlock and general player communities to place pressure onto Blizzard and it's backward-stepping e-Sport fetish to refocus the game and help make things right again.

Now, consider the picture of the child at the top of this post again. Notice what he's wearing? Chain mail armor. In a system where Resilience exists in it's current form, THAT KID HAS MORE LASTING POWER AGAINST MELEE THAN A WARLOCK DOES.

53 comments:

Other stats affect multiple variables, agility for rogues works on both attack power and critical strike chance, for example.

It seems to me that adding all the damage types to resilience evens it out fairly well - before you were unfairly punishing crit specs (you mentioned destruction warlocks), and now it pretty much works on all damage. It seems to me it's basically supposed to "slow down" the pace of pvp compared to pre-tbc, which is something I approve of.

Yes RNG exists, but at least between resilience and the stamina re-budgeting you can't get two-shot any more.

And yes, warlocks could use some more escape tech, so I'm curious to see what Wrath brings.

Thanks Horns, Psy! It's good to be back after a little bit of uncertainty regarding my account. The whole situation creeped me out and put me off a bit--I hope that's understandable.

@chronic: Thanks for commenting, and bringing up the very good example of Agility. That stat has always been at the heart of the Caster vs. Melee debate, and indeed wreaks of the same stink that Resilience does. The difference between the two, however, is that Agility is self-balanced, affecting an offensive and defensive variable while Resilience is strictly defensive. This gives it an almost doubling effect when both defense variables can be applied to a certain class--Warlocks, for example. We are doubly screwed by that one stat, so there is definitely a distinction between how those two stats are compared and applied.

Maybe I'm just being dense here, but I'm not sure how warlocks are "doubly" affected by resilience. Yes, it lessens warlock dot damage. Yes, it lessens the damage of crit-capable spells such as shadowbolt and searing pain. And yes, it lessens the effect of warlocks' mana drains.

So basically what we're saying is resilience affects every single damaging warlock spell. Okay.

But isn't that true for every class? How does this affect warlocks more than anyone else?

@Chronic: Resilience does not affect all classes equally, and has a bias towards benefiting melee classes for sure. Consider the amount of damage that is accounted for by a Rogue's white damage, for example. Those attacks, when they do not crit, are completely unaffected by Resilience, but still do ridiculous amounts of damage.

The same cannot be said of Caster damage, and especially not Warlocks and their gimped DoTS.

The line becomes a little bit more difficult to define when you begin comparing the effect of Resilience on each casting class, but a line is there--I was just hoping to save it for a different post. Heheheh.

Rogue white damage is definitely affected by resilience! You get less white crits, and the white crits you do get are smaller.

Dots get the damage reduction all the time, but that doesn't mean they're affected "more", since the "chance to crit" component of resilience doesn't touch dots at all.

If you want to claim that the penalty for warlocks is larger, show me some numbers! Your claim is pretty baseless as it stands, and seems to mostly consist of an appeal to common knowledge. I'm not trying to be combatative, I'm genuinely curious as to how you came to this conclusion.

Oh and Jagoex was talking about normal white damage not criticals. Think about what he is saying though because he's right. Whether its melee versus melee or melee versus caster, melee can always do damage that isn't subject to resilience. Warlocks have no escape from melee currently and have their casted spells pushed back and must therefore rely on dots. Those dots are affected by resilience! Its very clear imo.

It's obvious resilience favors melee. They crit less often and for less damage like everyone else but the rest of their white damage is unaffected. Casters don't have white damage unless they are wanding or using their equipped weapon. Their only means of attack is casting, which is being knocked back by all the melee. And as the op said, it's worse for warlocks because they can't do anything about it.

You can't just say "normal white damage", as if rogues can choose to never crit and thus not be affected by resilience. If you look at a rogue's sustained white damage, some attacks crit, some do not, and he does a certain average amount of damage. Resilience reduces this amount of damage. The fact rogues can crit is explicitly considered when balancing them and when scaling their gear.

But okay, if you want to say that "melee normal white damage" is not affected by resilience, then what about non-crit searing pain? That's not affected either.

If you're complaining that dots are "always" affected by resilience, then consider that melee attacks are affected twice - crit chance reduction and crit damage reduction - while dots are only affected by the damage reduction.

If you have some actual math, let's take a look! Otherwise, stop claiming it's "obvious" without any backup whatsoever.

(and please don't conflate the issues of spell pushback and resilience - I agree that spell pushback is an issue, but it's a seperate issue.)

"But okay, if you want to say that "melee normal white damage" is not affected by resilience, then what about non-crit searing pain? That's not affected either."

Comparing white automatic damage to yellow casted damage is not very smart. There are other problems that when tied into the resilience issue makes for unfair warfare. That's what I got from jagoex's post, anyway. And I agree with it.

"There are other problems that when tied into the resilience issue makes for unfair warfare."

Well, I agree that there are other problems, but you haven't explained what that has to do with resilience. If the problem is that warlocks can never get a cast off versus rogues, then lets address that directly instead of blaming a separate mechanic.

You just keep repeating the same thing and telling me I'm being "not very smart", it's not all that useful!

All things being equal, a nicely PvP-geared Rogue or Warrior can walk up to a Warlock, right-click on him, and kick the living daylights out of him even if none of their attacks crit.

The Warlock equivalent would be to DoT the Rogue or Warrior (automatic damage of sorts), and watch as his DoTS would sometimes tick for LESS THAN 100 damage a tick, even with over +1000 Spell Damage!

Yes, we have multiple DoTS ticking, but when they land for so little stretched out for over a quarter minute or so, there's not much for a player with over 10k health to worry about.

That kind of answers your "But isn't that true for every class? How does this affect warlocks more than anyone else?" question, does it not? Not every class has had their primary (or class-defining) method of damage crippled by Resilience--Warlocks have. We not only lost a lot of damage via Crits, we lost a lot of damage production via our standard attacks! Can a Rogue or Warrior say that? I don't think so.

And with more Resilience becoming available with each Season, the greater the issue.

Also, with regards to your statement about Resilience being introduced to slow down or extend the duration of PvP, that is exactly what it was originally meant to do, but now it is being used as a class-balancing tool. And obviously, it hasn't worked.

And to respond to the following statement: "Dots get the damage reduction all the time, but that doesn't mean they're affected "more", since the "chance to crit" component of resilience doesn't touch dots at all."

The issue is that Warlocks are experiencing constant damage reduction to their DoTS AND crit damage reduction all at the same time. The equivalent would be if Rogue standard (non-crit) white damage (which "tick" much faster than DoTS, might I add) were to be affected by Resilience as well. Oh how the Rogue forums would explode... but Warlocks have to deal with their version of that nightmare every day.

And then this: "But okay, if you want to say that "melee normal white damage" is not affected by resilience, then what about non-crit searing pain? That's not affected either."

That's the thing--a gouged/cheap shotted/kidney shotted/intercepted/kicked Warlock can't even cast, and when he does... it probably took way too long to do so. It's a combination of Resilience and class balance issues that prompted this post. That's why it's called Warlocks vs. Melee, not Warlocks vs. Resilience. ;)

We're sort of going around in circles a bit. I see what you're saying, and I think I basically agree with you that things are pretty rough for warlocks at the moment.

The whole "rogue normal white hits aren't affected by resilience" argument makes no sense to me though. Rogues are not balanced around their non-crit white damage. They're balanced around their *total* white damage, just like warlocks are balanced around their total dot damage. Both of these totals are reduced by resilience!

"And with more Resilience becoming available with each Season, the greater the issue."

This isn't quite true - people have been at the resilience soft-cap since season 2, and although you can go over the cap and still get some benefits versus dots, in practice nobody ever does because of the other stats you would have to sacrifice for such a limited benefit. There was no resilience upgrade at all from s3 -> s4 for rogues, unless you count the epic trinket.

Rogues not needing to wear as much resilience as other classes due to their mechanics is another, separate issue, which thankfully it looks like they're slowly addressing (ie, 2.4.3 cheat death change).

I don't really want to get into the cast time pushback stuff. Yes, it's true, and I wasn't contesting that part of your original post.

Anyway, I'm happy to drop it. I'm not entirely sure your anecdotal "dots sometimes tick for less than 100!" argument proves anything conclusively, but I don't have any data either, so that won't get us anywhere.

Besides, there's a lot worse imbalances in the game than warlocks vs melee, playing a holy paladin for a bit might put things in perspective!

Good article. One thing I wanted to mention after reading all of the comments is that rogues are not well balanced around their white damage. They are severely op where warlocks have completely underpowered dots.

Blizzard could have saved themselves a lot of work had they left resilience out of the game and tweaked pvp healing a little. I'm sorry but three dps should be able to kill a healer without a problem but they can't. Something must be wrong.

Warlocks have been given the short end of the stick in the Burning Crusade. We started out strong but then had our dot coefficients nerfed twice and then this resilience nonsense was put on top of it. For an ability that is easy to heal through, they sure are weak. And don't even get me started on how op heals are.

Jago,It's good to see you backed and I enjoyed your article. I think there are a number of factors contributing to the current dominance of the rogue and warrior in the arena (non-mana users, high amount of burst damage, damage mitigation, etc.) but (as you mentioned) I think the # 1 reason are the tools they've been given to get and keep their targets in melee range.

I know this is a Warlock forum and the topic is rightfully centered on that class, but these imbalances are affecting other classes as well. i.e. see my main, a hunter ;)

I think the arena is an exciting pvp addition to the game, but it's frustrating to see Blizz apparently show no interest in wanting to balance it until WotLK, then go and make it the be all and end all of pvp in S4.

Hey Dag! I agree with you fully on the matter--indeed this does affect most ranged classes in general and it is a complete disappointment that the devs involved with PvP balance haven't picked this up until now (via Wrath development).

Even when WotLK is released, however, I'm sure we'll be seeing many issues amidst the PvP scene once again. There has always been this constant bias towards melee classes--Chilton even said that no one should be able to successfully go "toe-to-toe" with a Warrior.

**Rogues are not balanced around their non-crit white damage. They're balanced around their *total* white damage, just like warlocks are balanced around their total dot damage. Both of these totals are reduced by resilience!**

You just agreed with Jagoex without even knowing it.

All of a Warlock's DOT damage is affected by resilience. Not all of a Rogue's white damage is affected by resilience. That is a huge distinction, and if the classes are balanced the way you say they are, it is a legitimate reason of complaint.

"All of a Warlock's DOT damage is affected by resilience. Not all of a Rogue's white damage is affected by resilience. That is a huge distinction, and if the classes are balanced the way you say they are, it is a legitimate reason of complaint."

That is the essence of what I was trying to convey (or at least a portion of it, anyway).

@Pink: Welcome back to you! I miss the days of lol'ing at foes with a HWL Spellblade in-hand and complimented by a Firestone. Such good fun that was. =)

"All things being equal, a nicely PvP-geared Rogue or Warrior can walk up to a Warlock, right-click on him, and kick the living daylights out of him even if none of their attacks crit."

You mean like you can kick the living daylights out of: Priests, Paladins, Druids, Mages, and Shamans (Shamen maybe?)... Those classes have almost no way of even touching you if they're constantly being spell locked by your Fel Hunter and feared to oblivion... What do you want? To have absolutely no class that can pwn you? Correct me it I'm wrong, but that's the reason you were nerfed by resilience in the first place! Oh, and btw, rogues pwn just about everyone not wearing plate... they need to be made to wear cloth and get stunned on every hit they recieve.

"I might have missed the point but what you are saying is that I should become a "melee" warlock and weild a sword or two handed staff, stack attack power gems and do white damage, right?... right?"

You did miss the point, I'm afraid. What I'm saying is that locks already have an upper hand on several classes in pvp, so complaining that only warriors and rogues are a weakness is making a moot point. Granted, those are the classes you see most often in arena, but think about how I feel playing a disc/holy priest and the lock comes after me with Fear, Dot, Spell Lock, and mana drain, all before I get off maybe two heals. Fair? I think not! That's why resilience affects dots. By the time rogues and warriors get back to you from Fear/Death Coil/ Howl of Terror, they'd already be dead. Therefore, don't complain, because even with the resilience nurfing your dots, you're still the bane of all casters :p

Ok, I have a 30 lock and my main is a warrior which will hopefully soon be my alt. I agree generally that warriors/rogues pwnzors locks;however, locks pwn mages which pwn warriors so Elton John was right in singing the circle of life...

Haha this post is so full of win! But I think the circle will help us beat melee but only if the affliction tree is fulled to at least Curse of Exhaustion. Then the spell will be a kiter's dream come true!

Excellent post, and discussion. I would really love to see some numbers on the the effect of resilience on locks vs rogues/warrs. My instinct is that locks get short end here. A full s4 warr vs a full s4 lock still has a close to 20-23% chance in zerker stance, and with talents those crits will be doing around 90% of normal crit dmg, giving them massive burst potential. Whereas any lock specc'd to survive longer than 3 seconds is reduced to a relative dribble of dps.

That being said, it is still extrememly possible to be viable as a lock in pvp, despite melee and their nastiness. Increased spell dmg and survivability, along with well timed stutter-fears can still reek havoc on rogues and stupid warrs even when just dotting (undead rogues still make me want to die, however).

This of course is beside my biggest complaints playing a lock in arena: a squishy ass pet that is necessary for survivability and the necessity of holding back our best dps when we do get a fear off for fear of breaking the cc.

In a Battleground, they can top meters easily if left alone, by simply DoT'ing multiple targets. But I'm not talking about situations where a Warlock is left unbothered...

When locked down by melee, Warlocks generally must rely on their instant cast spells. Everything else suffers from push back or interrupts, making them hardly worth casting.

With that in mind, consider this: with a little less than 400 Resilience, those instant cast DoTS are doing 10% less damage than they would be doing otherwise, and they are the main means of attack against melee targets that are already heavily built to withstand them.

And this goes above and beyond that simple fact of damage reduction; Warlock survivability affects this issue also.

Currently, our only means of survivability is speccing SL/SL. Doing so does not allow us to pick up Shadow Mastery or Shadow and Flame, further gimping the damage that could be potentially done by our spells.

And considering the fact that our DoT damage is consistent and slow while our opponent's max health is through the roof (assuming high Resil, Stam-heavy gear), they can EASILY be healed through what little damage we are doing too!

With so few options, there's just very little a Warlock can do without being overly dependent on his teammates (specifically, a Rogue, S. Priest, and Druid).

@Dark: Must have missed your comment the first time around - sorry bud. But ya, I think numbers would be helpful in backing up what is a fairly clear impression of things. I may sit down and crunch some this upcoming weekend, but as you can imagine, things are pretty crazy these days. =)

it is simple to fix really, give warlocks a single target root ability that break after a certain duration or can break when non-dot damage is applied to it. im sure if blizzard would listen to this concept it would be fun to animate for them (with some kind of demonic claw coming from the ground and grabbing the target. (much like soul trap in WC3)

Funny you would say smth like that. I kill locks and mages in BGs cause Im their anti-class. That like my job in BGs.

So I guess that makes me a guttless class. And by your belief that reflects who I am irl. Damn you must be a real psychologist. Well as I see it you are a little whiner here. I think it reflects who you are irl.

I dont gank for no reason. EVER! I do however corpse camp the gankers. Especially those who gank lowbies. Thats who I am irl. You can not judge someone by the class they play lol. Its stupid, lame, retarded... You can judge them by the way they play that class and the game in general.

And 80% of locks I see try to gank me. 99% of them end up being corpse camped by me. You are probably one of those. You try to gank a rogue cause you have a grudge at a rogue class, end up being corpse camped and then come whine on the forums saying we are bad irl and we are OP. lol at you.

To OP:We are your anti-class. We lose against some classes but not against you.You on the other hand kill majority of classes but lose against warriors and rogues. But you cant accept that you actually have an anti class. You want to be OP like you were. You all posting here a just a bunch of sorry ass whiners...

That comment about how people are IRL was just whiny. I think the OP made some good points.

I go after healers and locks in BG. I can put down locks pretty easy, saying that please remember that there are classes for everyone that are tough to compete against. I hate fighting paladins. Warriors with a ton of resilience and so on.

I have noticed alot of people complain that their class is nerfed or that others are getting the good stuff when their class isn't. That's a beautiful thing about compromise. No one's happy.

I watch folks complain how us rogues are not the dps class we once were. Maybe we aren't but I like the class and it falls to me to figure out what tools I have to do the best that I can.

I offer this suggestion. Run with a complimentary class. My bro has a lock. I lock them in place..no pun intended and my bro burns them down.

Just for some FYI. I like killing locks alot, simply because when I used to run my hunter they could burn me down very quickly.

i play a rogue, (and undead, so will of the forsaken comes into play) and i gotta say, while it is nice having soft pincushion easysauce warlocks to beat on, i understand completely how unbalanced rogue vs. lock is. i wish it was different because i hate feeling overpowered, and i really can't deny the fact that a decently played rogue can just completely dominate an expert lock.

blizzard needs to give them more then just fear, IMO

ironically, my other lvl 80 character is a lock, although i dont pvp with him.